


Reflection

by scholarlydragon



Category: Lore Olympus (Webcomic)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2020-08-20 09:01:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20225236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scholarlydragon/pseuds/scholarlydragon
Summary: Truths in an Elevator. (An edit and rewrite of this is planned, but there is no planned timeframe for completion, so I just wanted to get it posted.)





	Reflection

Persephone sighed as she stepped onto the elevator and turned back to face the doors. It had been a painfully long day and she was looking forward to going home and lying down. She gave the elevator attendant imp a tired smile. “Lobby, please.” The tiny red creature nodded smartly and fluttered up to press the necessary buttons and the reflective doors began sliding shut. Only to be halted, with the chirp of an alarm chime, by the sudden appearance of a black gloved hand sliding into the gap. The doors slid smoothly open once more and Hades slipped into the elevator. He breathed a relieved sounding sigh, then froze as he saw he wasn’t alone. Persephone saw the quick flutter of conflict in his face, as though deciding whether to stay or flee. She couldn’t decide, herself. To say that things had been tense between them of late would have been the understatement of the millennium.

The imp attendant, oblivious to the strain in the air, fluttered between them apprehensively, her shrill voice unhappy, “Your Majesty, that could have been dangerous! Next time, please wait for the elevator to return!” Hades looked over at her with an unreadable expression. The imp quailed under his stare. “I mean, that is- not that I would tell you what to do…” Her voice turned to a quiet squeak, “Um, what floor, please?”

“The lobby,” Hades muttered, turning to face the door, hands shoved into trouser pockets, back stiff, every bit of his posture screaming that he would rather have been anywhere else. The imp closed the doors and silence fell.

Persephone resisted the urge to turn and look at Hades, keeping to the safety of examining his reflection in the doors. Despite his many objections, Hera had mandated that her internship would stand. For her part, Persephone had come to relish the challenge of working in the Underworld. Though the individual days tended to be difficult, the job was interesting and, occasionally, even fun. Not least because it was so different from anything she had experienced before. Hades, on the other hand, while he had been as professional as anyone could wish, had grown more withdrawn since he had lost the argument against having her as an employee, enforcing a painfully professional distance between them. Persephone had hardly seen him in the week since she had started working in the underworld. Not since the argument in his office when he had made clear that he did not approve of Hera’s arrangements. The hurt at being treated so had gradually been building to a simmering irritation, but she had not yet worked up the courage to confront him about it.

As her eyes wandered over his reflection, reaching his face, Persephone realized that he was watching her observing him, one expressive eyebrow lifted, his red eyes giving away nothing of what he was thinking. With a hard swallow, she looked away, unable to bear the coolly withdrawn look she had seen from him all week.

The sudden, hard lurch caught them off guard.

Her balance suddenly stolen, Persephone stumbled as the elevator shuddered to a stop, and would have fallen if Hades had not caught her immediately, one arm coming up around her shoulders and his other hand catching hers as she flailed out instinctively. He stepped closer to steady her and Persephone’s nose buried briefly in his jacket lapel. She was overwhelmed by the scent of him. Tobacco and woodsmoke. Sandalwood and tea. And a cool spice that made her heart race. The moment stretched out, almost unbearably. Persephone shivered, fighting the urge to move closer, to embrace the warm solidity of him. Hades froze and Persephone would have sworn she heard his breath catch in his chest. Abruptly, he released her, though not without ensuring she was once more solid on her feet.

Hades cleared his throat and turned to the attendant, his tone curt, “What happened?”

The small red imp blushed, flustered at the failure of her duty. “I-I don’t know, your Majesty.” She looked up at the small vent cover in the ceiling. “I will go and see what I can find out and get maintenance on it right away.” In a flash of red wings, she slipped out and was gone.

Hades eyed the tiny vent with poorly disguised ill humor. “If only that were bigger, I could go myself.”

“Are you so eager to get away from me?” Persephone blurted, annoyance with him and the situation neatly sidestepping her admittedly small verbal filters.

Hades gave her a sharp look. “No! I- I just- It just seems like the kind of thing I should deal with myself. You know… As the boss,” he finished lamely. 

She huffed and rolled her eyes.

The silence stretched on.

Persephone looked up, catching his eyes in the reflective surface of the elevator doors. This time, he looked away first.

Irritated and suddenly, thoroughly tired of the whole thing, Persephone turned to face him, arms folded over her chest. “How long are we going to do this, Hades?”

He fidgeted with the cuffs of his gloves, clearly avoiding looking at her. “Do what?”

Persephone rolled her eyes. “Don’t play stupid. It doesn’t suit you. You know exactly what I mean.” She was briefly shocked at her own words, but frustration led her to speak to him as she might never have otherwise. “We’ve been walking on eggshells ever since I came to work here. I thought we were friends.” She suppressed the flicker of her crush. She had no reason to think he might ever return her feelings. At this point, she just wanted them on friendly terms again.

Hades squeezed his eyes shut, looking as though he’d been jabbed in the gut. “I- we are.”

“Friends don’t look like they want to run when they catch each other in the elevator!” She sighed. “This week has been torturous, Hades. I just want to stop feeling like we’re dancing around each other. I mean, I know you’re my boss now, but there’s plenty of people who are friends with their bosses.”

“Persephone-”

“I mean,” she blurted out, interrupting him, unable to stop now that she had a vent for how she had been feeling. “I know that a lot has happened in a short amount of time, but-”

“Kore, I  _ can’t _ !”

His outburst silenced her blurted ramble and Persephone looked up at him, her eyes wide. He stared at her, breath heaving and a strange, wary, vulnerable look on his face.

“You can’t what?”

He backed up a step, looking like caged animal, but there was nowhere to flee in the confined space of the stalled elevator. He shook his head, a small denying motion, as though he could take back what he’d said, prevent her questions. Persephone was not about to let him, not when she had potential answers to the misery of the last week. She crossed her arms over her chest and leveled a pointed stare at him.

“What can’t you do, Hades?”

He raked his hands through his hair, leaving the white strands fluffed and disordered. “I-I can’t get close to you,” he said in a near whisper, every word sounding like it was wrenched from his gut. “I c-can’t let you get close to me.”

Persephone swallowed against the sudden lump of her heart in her throat. “But… that can’t be it. That can’t be all there is to it. What changed so suddenly?” A thought suddenly occurred to her, “Is it Minthe? Did she say something? Because if she’s telling you who can and can’t have as a friend-”

“No,” Hades interrupted, his voice sounding tired and strained. Almost defeated. He leaned against the wall of the elevator and slid down to sit on the floor with a thump and a grunt. “She has nothing to do with this. She’s not even in the picture anymore.” He huffed out a self-deprecating laugh. “Another recent development.”

“What is it then?” Persephone squashed the urge to go to him. The plainly anguished look on his face pulled at her heart and she ached to comfort. But she needed to hear his reasons. She needed to know the why for his sudden behavior change.

He leaned his head back against the wall with a muffled thump. His voice was defeated sounding when he spoke, “How many times have you been hurt since we met?”

Persephone blinked at the apparent non-sequitur. “Hurt? I don’t-”

He went on as though she hadn’t spoken, ticking off points on his fingers. “Eros got you d-drunk and put you in the back of my car. The tabloid. T-tartarus. And all that in the span of three days. All because of me.” Hades raised his eyes to hers, pain in his gaze. “I’m dangerous to you.”

She could only stare at him for a long moment. “Hades…” Moving closer, she sank down to the floor next to him, folding her legs under and sitting on her heels. “None of that was you.”

“Wasn’t it?” He fidgeted with his gloves again, arms loosely draped over drawn-up knees. “How many of those things would have happened if I hadn’t been involved?”

She shook her head, exasperated. “You know, for a king, you really are hopelessly naive. Yeah, sure, you were involved. But you didn’t  _ do _ any of it. Aphrodite and Eros made their own choices.  _ You _ made sure I was looked after that night. And tabloids are tabloids. I can’t help what other people think. As far as Tartarus is concerned…” She shivered at the memory of frigid air and colder, bony fingers. “You didn’t send me there. In fact, as I recall, you  _ rescued _ me.”

Hades looked at her, distracted from self-castigation by curiosity., “You know, you never did tell me how you ended up there.”

Persephone shook her head emphatically. “And I’m definitely not going to now. My point is… Hades, you didn’t  _ do _ any of that, and I’m not willing to lose my friend over something he didn’t do.”

“It- It’s not as simple as that.” He rubbed one hand over his face. “I had in mind k-keeping a safe distance between us. Concern for you and self-p-preservation for me. It didn’t work. All I succeeded in doing is making myself, and you, miserable. And I’m sick of being m-miserable and I hate that I’ve made you feel th-that way. I wouldn’t be surprised if you hated me after how I’ve behaved. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Persephone sighed. “I don’t hate you, Hades. I’m not going to lie and say the idea of  _ trying _ to never crossed my mind over the past week. I’ve been pretty angry with you. But I can’t.” She frowned. “I still don’t get it, though. I know you’re the boss, and you’re the king. I’m just an intern and I get that you can’t show favoritism or whatever, but what’s wrong with being friends?”

He turned to look at her, and her breath caught at the depth of frustrated longing on his face. Suddenly, everything he’d said clicked into place along with what had been carefully  _ not _ said. 

_ Oh _ …

Hopelessly naive, indeed.

This was not about friendship and never really had been.

She sifted through the sudden swell of questions rising in her, tamping down the surge of hope in her furiously suppressed crush. So many things she wanted to ask him, so many possibilities. In the end, she settled for a simple one first.

“How long?”

He thumped his head back against the wall. “Since the m-moment I saw you at the party. When you st-started working here, I had thought I was protecting myself by keeping you at arm’s length. Instead, all I managed to do was hurt b-both of us.” He scrubbed his hands over his face with a groan and fell silent for a long moment, looking as though he were gathering his thoughts and courage. When he spoke again, it was hardly more than a whisper as he stared at his hands. “Kore… you say you c-can’t hate me. You c-call me your friend. I don’t know if you would-if you  _ c-could _ ever truly consider me. The Underworld d-doesn’t have much t-to offer the goddess of Sp-Spring.”

Persephone couldn’t stop the wild grin that spread across her face. Could it really be so simple after all of this? She reached out and took one of his hands in both of her own. He sat very still.

“Hades, you are the first thing in my life that made sense for me. You’re the first person that ever treated me like any kind of equal, like it really mattered to you what I thought and what I had to say. The Underworld has one claim on my affections that nowhere else could.”

His head snapped up and he stared at her, disbelief warring with hope in his eyes. He reached out and tentatively combed his fingers into her hair as though unsure if his touch would be accepted, but unable to stop himself. “It’s not just that I felt as though I were a danger to you. I am… significantly older than you. And I know I have baggage. So much it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“I don’t care about that,” she said clearly, “I don’t give a damn that you’re older than me and I think it’s a rare person who doesn’t have emotional baggage.” She tried for a teasing grin. “What else you got? Cause I think I’ve pretty well addressed every concern brought up so far.”

He grinned in return, a wide, genuine smile that transformed his lean face. “Indeed you have. Ably.”

“So,” she raised her eyebrows. “Seems to me that you have a choice. You could go back to feeling miserable. Or, o king of the dead, you could take a chance.”

The grin still on his face broke open and he laughed, the warm baritone sound echoing in the confined space of the elevator. “When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound like much of a choice at all.” His gloved hand on her cheek was gentle. Tentative. As though he were afraid, even now, that she would rebuff him. “Kore… forgive me for being a fool.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she laughed, raising her own hand to press his to her cheek. “I love you too, you big idiot.” Ducking her head, Persephone threaded her arms around his neck, embracing him. Hades went still, all trembling tension, as he had in Tartarus, as though unable to believe what was happening. Then, with a groan, he returned the embrace, near crushing her into the hug. After long moments, Persephone felt him cup the back of her head in one hand, encouraging her to raise it from where she had burrowed against his neck.

Reality seemed to slide into slow-motion as she raised her head, cheek sliding along his. The corners of their mouths brushed, and it was the most natural thing in the world, such an easy thing, to turn slightly and bring lips into alignment.

Hades’ kiss was gentle, respectful, tentative. For a moment. As Persephone enthusiastically returned the kiss, the tentative approach vanished, subsumed under heat and hunger and a kiss so searing, so shatteringly perfect that nothing could remain the same afterward.

A sudden shudder startled them into breaking the kiss as the cab began moving once more, heading downward. She giggled as Hades chuckled, leaning his forehead against hers and cradling her head in his hands.

Everything was different now.


End file.
